Freshwater, and arrived there rather late in the evening. Both the hotels at that favourite watering-place were overcrowded with visitors, and we had to accept the accommodation, along with several others, of the floor of a coffee-room for our night's lodging. Here our dream occurred, and probably the novelty of our night quarters had something to do with its suggestion.] SERMON II. FISHMONGERS. Polonius-Do you know me, my lord? you You are wrong, Polonius, quite wrong, my lord knew you from the first when he said. you were a fishmonger. If had known yourself—but self-knowledge is a rare privilege and the peculiar good fortune of a wise man—you would have exclaimed at this earlier point of B Had you rememnot have been taken "dead for a ducat." 1, Polonius, and that fishmonger, and rewhose motory habit ught to have known ould have pointed a haps postponed that "certain convocavho enjoyed their turn r on the hook. sencrantz and Guildenthe fishmongers? Fie urtiers, that ye condeu have plainly not been `, you don't seem quite ing, you bungle at it. ou flounder and make "e more like fish than tually caught in your nel apron at once, for your intrusive interview, "though this be madness, yet there's method in it." The termfoolish, officious, old chamberlain,—had a meaning in it, a very obvious meaning, a very pertinent and pointed meaning. Hamlet knew you excellent well, better than you knew yourself, old, loquacious courtier. Do you think my lord did not know you when he told you that you should be as old as he, " if, like a crab, you could go backwards?" You couldn't go backwards to his youth, could you? and the retreating gait of the crab might be a crustacean accomplishment, but it did not comport with your wisdom and convenience to walk backwards. Your tendency was all in the opposite direction-forwards. A little more of the crab action would have been to your personal credit and comfort. You were always going forwards, going where you were not wanted, meddling with what did not concern you. Well had it been for you if you had thought of the hint about the crab when you volunteered to get behind the arras of the Queen's bed-chamber; you had not got into that scrape which put an end to your going altogether, whether |